Kismetology

by Jaimie Admans

  Date number two courtesy of Cupid-Waits.com is Evan, or "Worldly male, sixty-three, seeks an outgoing fifty to sixty-year-old for companionship and company on many trips abroad." One that sounds promising solely for the "many trips abroad". He’s pretty much earned himself a date before we’ve even started, just on the "I plan to take your mother out of the country on numerous occasions" thing.

  When I get to Belisana, I’m surprised by how old Evan looks. The photo posted online is either taken a very long time ago, or is of someone else entirely. I mean, I know he is sixty-three, which is kind of above the age range I’ve been targeting, but the "trips abroad" were just too much to resist. It’s swings and roundabouts as always though.

  "Hello Mackenzie." He smiles at me when I arrive, but doesn’t get up. I realise that maybe I expect too much of a man. Does any man get up when a woman comes to the table these days? But at sixty-three, maybe he can’t get up. Maybe he has really bad arthritis or something. I decide not to knock points off before we’ve even started.

  "Your hair is very sexy," Evan says as I sit down.

  "Thank you," I say, a bit taken aback. No one in their right mind would call my hair sexy. It is very unsexy hair. It is frizzy hair, occasionally curly, if I don’t shake my head too hard or turn around too fast.

  He is already reading a menu, and I always order the same thing anyway. Holly comes up to take our orders but Evan asks if she can give us a few minutes.

  "So," he says, when she’s left. "Mackenzie." He leans forward over the table and beckons for me to come closer. I lean forward too. Maybe he is a little deaf and has forgotten his hearing aid or something.

  "Okay?" I ask.

  "Will you give me a blowjob?"

  Ack! I sit up straight and push my chair back to get away from him. "No! Are you out of you mind?"

  "If you don’t want to go outside, we can do it in the bathroom."

  Ugh. Who does this guy think he is? I’m actually at a loss for what to say. Here is a guy old enough to be my father. Older even. A guy old enough to be my grandfather has just asked me for a blowjob in the middle of a crowded restaurant. I’m horrified. I’m beyond horrified. Seeing as there is no suitable response for this situation, I get up out of my chair and walk away as fast as I can without sprinting.

  "I’ll graciously accept a threesome." Evan calls after me, apparently not bothered by the fact that every person currently eating their meals can hear him.

  Ugh. Yuck, yuck, yuck. What is it about these old guys? These ageing Lotharios with evidently more money than common decency.

  I go round and into the kitchen, still shuddering at the mere thought.

  "You okay, babe?" Dan asks. He’s used to me being here now. Just lately I seem to be spending a lot of time in his restaurant.

  "No," I say. "That guy just propositioned me."

  "Are you serious?"

  I nod.

  "He’s like your grandfather."

  "I know."

  Dan laughs.

  I smack him on the shoulder. "Dan, it’s not funny."

  "You’re right," he says, trying but failing to stop giggling.

  "That’s disgusting," Holly says coming in. "He just put his hand on my knee when I went to get his menu. Ugh."

  "Well, that’s not on," Dan says, suddenly standing up straight.

  "It isn’t?"

  "Oh no. Nobody touches my staff."

  And with that he’s storming out into the dining area, kitchen door slamming behind him. Holly and I stand in the doorway and watch as Dan gives Evan a mouthful, points angrily towards the front door and yells at him to never come back. Evan leaves, and I watch Dan seething as he stands watch over him as he collects his coat, pays the bill for the food he never got to eat and leaves.

  "Damn," Holly says. "I could’ve found some real nice rat poison to slip into his water tonight."

  I smile at her, but something is making me feel uneasy. I can’t help thinking about what has just happened. I tell Dan that the old guy asked me for a blowjob and he laughs. Holly tells Dan that the old guy put a hand on her knee, and Dan storms out ready for a fight. What is that about? Why did Dan laugh at my encounter with him, but ban the guy and barely refrain from hitting him when it was one of the waitresses he’d bothered?

  I try to justify it by the fact there was touching involved. I mean, he may have been incredibly rude and inappropriate with me, but he didn’t put a hand (or anything else) anywhere near me, thank god. Plus the fact that I’m not staff. I guess I can see it from Dan’s point of view. But it would’ve been nice if my boyfriend had stuck up for me in the same way he stuck up for one of his waitresses.

  CHAPTER 26

  Predictably, I have no hope whatsoever for the Tuesday night date. I’m tempted to cancel, but no matter how horrible a sixty-three-year-old asking for a blowjob is, I have to carry on. I’ve come too far to turn back now just because of one jerk. Well, many, many jerks, but only one in particular this week. Besides, this is The Farmer Wants a Wife guy, and my mum has always had a soft spot for pot-bellied pigs, so maybe this guy has a good shot.

  The first thing I notice when I enter Belisana on Tuesday night is the Wellington boots. It may well seem like a cliché, but my farmer is wearing welly boots. At the dinner table. I blink a few times, in the vague hope that maybe I am either dreaming or have entered some sort of parallel universe arranged by Cupid-Waits.com as some sort of big practical joke. I spot Dan on his way into the kitchen and I wave at him. He winks at me, and the look on his face reads "Wow. He’s a keeper", clear as day.

  Above the knees, he’s actually dressed quite nicely. The trousers are plain black, and he has on a blue shirt and a tie. And then there are the wellies. These are not just any wellies. These are light green wellies with pink swirls on them. I wonder what on earth has possessed a relatively well turned out guy to wear Wellington boots to dinner in a nice restaurant. And there is only one way to find out.

  "Hello," I say, walking up to him. "You must be Ed."

  "Oh hello, Mackenzie, right?"

  I nod. "Thank you for meeting me here."

  "You’re welcome. It’s a little out of my way, but I like to come into the city now and again."

  "Is it far for you?"

  "It’s about an hour drive. Not too bad."

  "And you wouldn’t mind dating someone from here?"

  "Not at all. Besides, if it worked out, she could always come and live with me. I have a very big house and lots of land."

  "And lots of animals too, I would imagine?"

  "Yes, yes. Plenty."

  "Eleanor likes animals," I tell him. Okay, so I’m not impressed by his choice of footwear, but if it works out between him and my mother, she can go and live with him. An hour away. And she can’t drive. And it’s not like he could just leave his farm, so she would have to move down there eventually. Did I mention that she’d be going to live with him?

  And really, who even looks at feet? He could be wearing pink stilettos and he’d still get a date with her. Any guy who is offering for her to live an hour or more away is going to get a date.

  "This is quite an unusual situation," he says. "Meeting my date’s daughter before I can even meet my date."

  I want to add, "if you get that far," but he lives an hour away, and if they get on together, so will Mum. Result!

  "Yes," I say instead. "But it seemed like the right thing to do. My mum doesn’t want to be dating every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes along, so I just thought I’d try to find her someone compatible, and not waste her time with men who aren’t." And believe me, there have been a few Tom’s, a few Harry’s, and more than a few dicks.

  "What do you think of me so far?"

  Well, I think it’s not polite to ask that question so directly, or maybe it is. Maybe I need a guy who will be direct and honest, rather than beating around the bush or offering to graciously accept a threesome in the restaurant bathroom. "I think you’d get on like a house on fire," I tell h
im instead. Heroically resisting the urge to add, "if you didn’t stamp the fire out with your big rubber boots."

  "I like your footwear, by the way," I say politely. I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I do like his footwear. I think they’d look lovely ten inches deep in a puddle of mud. I am merely trying to determine where in his upbringing it was considered protocol to wear such boots to a fancy eatery.

  "Oh, thank you," he says. "I hope you don’t think it inappropriate of me to wear them, but I just drove up this afternoon, and I thought it might rain. I didn’t think to bring anything else with me."

  Is it wrong of me to think that maybe when trying to impress someone, he could’ve walked in to any of the twenty shoe shops in nearby streets and purchased a pair of, well, anything that wasn’t green and pink? They didn’t have to be expensive. Frankly even the most basic budget trainers would have impressed me more. But if he gets on with my mum, she’ll be living an hour away. So I say, "No, it’s not inappropriate at all. I’m impressed." I’m impressed that you have the courage to wear those things out in public.

  "What do you recommend to eat in this joint? I’m a vegetarian, that is okay, isn’t it?"

  I nod. Now I am impressed. At least he isn’t a cannibalistic veterinarian. "So am I," I say.

  "And Eleanor?"

  "Yes," I conveniently don't tell him about the ham she always keeps in the fridge for ‘emergencies’.

  "That’s good. I don’t think I could date a meat eater."

  "So," I say as he studies the menu. "How come a handsome farmer like you is still single?"

  He smiles shyly and looks up at me. Oh my gosh, is he blushing? He is. Ed the farmer is sitting there blushing at something I said. How adorable. His cheeks are almost exactly the same colour as the swirls on his welly boots.

  "Aren’t you a sweet thing?" He says.

  I briefly wonder if that is the line he uses on his pot-bellied pigs.

  "No," he continues. "I never married. I just never found the woman that I would want to spend the rest of my life with. I am still looking, though. As you can see by me being here. I haven’t given up hope yet."

  I secretly think that is quite a sweet thing to say, and I decide then and there that he will be getting a date with Eleanor. Even I can overlook atrocious footwear in certain mitigating circumstances.

  "Mackenzie," Mum is saying angrily on the phone two mornings later. Her date with Ed the Farmer was last night, and I can already tell that it didn’t go well. "Mac, I’m serious," she says. "Where are you spewing these men up from?"

  "What was wrong with this one?" I sigh wearily, and mentally go over all the things that may have been wrong with him in my head. Did he turn up in thigh high waders? Come to sweep her off her feet on a tractor? Did he bring his pet pig along for the date?

  "I told you no to men who can’t drive."

  "He can drive. He told me that he drove into the city that afternoon."

  "Do you know what he did?" She is getting increasingly agitated and evidently ignoring my words completely.

  "Do you know what he did? He picked me up with his son driving. His son. His twenty-year-old son was driving, and do you know what he said? Do you?"

  "Um…"

  "He said ‘yes, I may have said I have my own car, but I didn’t say I could drive it.’ Can you believe that?"

  "Personally, I’d be more worried about the fact that he has a twenty-year-old son he failed to mention."

  "That’s not the issue, Mackenzie. Who says they own a car but they don’t know how to drive it? Who?"

  "So his twenty-year-old son was driving his dad on a date. So what? Big deal. Maybe he can drive, he just doesn’t like to in the city traffic."

  "No. He specifically said ‘I own my own car, but I never said I could drive it.’"

  "I don’t see that it matters," I say, hopefully. Evidently it does matter or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But all my hopes of Mum moving an hour away are evaporating right in front of my eyeballs and I’m clutching at straws here.

  "Oh but it does matter, Mackenzie. It gets worse. He hadn’t picked a restaurant. He told me to pick one in the car on the way there, and my mind went blank, so I said to go to Belisana, and he said ‘oh, I went there with your daughter.’ Mackenzie! You’re taking my dates to Daniel’s restaurant? That is so bad. Talk about making a bad impression."

  "Excuse me?" I say, angrily. "What is wrong with Belisana?"

  "Your boyfriend," she spits the word out. "Your boyfriend works there."

  "If you mean that my boyfriend is head chef there, then yes, he does work there. And so far no man has ever complained about anything." I sigh dejectedly. She’s never going to accept Dan.

  "So where did you go?" I ask, hoping to get off the topic of Dan altogether. I don’t want another argument.

  "Belisana. And it was horrible."

  "No, you didn’t," I say. "Because Dan would have told me if you’d have been there, and it would not have been horrible."

  "No, okay, we didn’t go there. We passed Dine Dee-Vine on the way, and I told him to go there instead. It’s much nicer."

  "You’ve never even been to Belisana."

  "I know it’s going to be horrible and crappy there. They’ve employed your lazy bum boyfriend, their standards can't be that high."

  I decide to take the high road and not react to that.

  "Okay," I say, brightly changing the subject. "So it’s a no for Ed then?" I already know the answer, but I ask anyway just because it will piss her off to ask.

  "Of course it’s a no, Mackenzie. His son had to park on double yellow lines and wait outside the restaurant for us."

  "Well, don’t worry. He’s not the only prospect this week. There’ll be someone else, I’m sure."

  CHAPTER 27

  Before the end of the week, I’ve had another email back from another one of the guys. I’ve arranged to meet Ruben on Thursday night at the usual venue. This is the "Youthful but mature fifty year old, seeks a woman for fun and commitment. Race/age/size/looks unimportant." Always a good thing then.

  I think that this guy might be promising until I walk in the door and Holly grabs me by the arm and pulls me aside.

  "I don’t mean to worry you," she hisses. "But he’s been here for an hour, and so far he’s worked his way through two bottles of wine and a few shots of Jack Daniels."

  "How can he have been here for an hour?" I ask. "I’m only five minutes late."

  She shrugs.

  I sigh. "You don’t know where I can find a crowd of normal fifty-something available men, do you?"

  "Define normal."

  "Oh, you know. One head, two legs. No welly boots and flies firmly zipped up."

  She laughs. "Dan said you were having a bit of trouble."

  "Trouble isn’t the word." I smile at her. "Anyway, thanks for the warning. I don’t think I’ll even bother to take my coat off."

  "Holler if you need anything," she says, walking away.

  "Ruben?" I say, approaching the table warily.

  "Mackenz… oo."

  "It’s ie," I say. "Mackenzie. But thanks anyway."

  "Won’t you sit down?" he asks, sliding his chair back a little uneasily.

  "No, I’m good, thanks," I say. I can tell he’s blind drunk from a mile off. It’s the red face and slightly unbalanced eyes that do it.

  "You’re much younger than in your photo. I thought you were fifty."

  "That’s my mother," I say, wondering why I am bothering to explain anything.

  He suddenly stands up, jumping off the chair so fast that it clatters to the floor behind him. He throws his arms out to his sides, and shouts at the top of his voice, "I love you! Mackenzoo, I loooooooove you!"

  I start to back away slowly, and then I turn on my heels and run away. Far, far away. Well, to the car park where I’ve left my car anyway. Another day, another failure in finding a suitable man.

  Oh well, Perhaps the race/age/size/looks thing is unimpor
tant because he’s always looking through beer goggles.

  "Hey Mackenzoo," Dan says when he gets home that night.

  "Ha ha, very funny," I tell him, unimpressed.

  "That’s cool. It’s not everyday we get heartfelt confessions of love happening in Belisana."

  I smack his thigh lightly. "It’s not funny, Dan. In fact, it’s getting downright ridiculous. Do you realise that the last guy I considered normal wore Wellington boots to the dinner table?"

  Dan laughs.

  "I’m serious. I’m just so tired of this dating crap. I don’t care if Mum sets up camp on our sofa and puts Emmerdale on twenty four hour loop anymore."

  "I do," Dan says, looking horrified.

  "You’re not the one dating these assholes."

  "I had an idea, if you want to hear it," Dan says.

  "Yes," I say. "Any ideas are more than welcome."

  "Before she met your dad, did your mother ever have, like, a high school boyfriend, or a relationship of some kind with a guy who she’s never gotten over? Did she ever love someone before your dad?"

  "I don’t know," I say. "Why?"

  "Because maybe we need to go further back. Your dad couldn't have been her first love, so maybe we should think about who she was with before him."

  "Ah, I see where you’re going. Maybe there’s some spark of chemistry left over."

  "I wasn’t really thinking that, but if you want to then yeah, sure."

  "What’s the point?" I ask. "What are the chances of Mum’s high school boyfriend still being single?"

  "I don’t know, but surely talking to someone she dated when she was dating could be worth a shot? Any insight would be really helpful."

  "I’m beginning to think that nothing will be helpful here."

  "Don’t worry baby, a good pair of steel toed shoes solves a multitude of problems. Just kick ‘em in the balls if they piss you off."

  I laugh. "Where do you suggest I find her old boyfriends, Dan?"

  "FriendsReunited. Do you know any names?"

  "I think there was one guy called Neil, but I’ve no idea whether she was in love with him or not."